If you’re going to get more RAM for your Mac, you’ll need to make sure you buy the right memory modules. Buying RAM for your MacĪpple doesn’t sell RAM directly, so you either have to buy third-party RAM or buy it second-hand from a site like eBay. And red memory pressure means you need to upgrade your Mac’s memory. Yellow memory pressure means you might need more RAM soon. If you see green memory pressure, you have enough RAM in your Mac. Open Activity Monitor from Applications > Utilities Here’s how to check if your Mac needs more RAM:ġ. If you’re unsure if you need to upgrade your Macintosh RAM, it’s worth checking to see how much you’re currently using. You don’t necessarily need to install the maximum amount of RAM possible, but 16GB or 32GB are good starting points for more intensive tasks. In fact, you can get along quite well with even less than that, if you’re just browsing the web and watching videos.īut if you're doing anything more intensive, like music production or video editing, then the more RAM your Mac has the better. For most everyday tasks, 8GB of memory is plenty. If your Mac is running well as it is, then you probably don’t need to add any more RAM. You can try each feature out for free, so you can see for yourself what it can do. To try them all, download MacKeeper, and give it a go. And it’s just one of MacKeeper’s many great features.

If you only occasionally need more RAM, this can save you time and money, compared to buying more memory.

Open MacKeeper, and select Memory Cleaner from the sidebar.

Instead of adding more RAM to your Mac, how about using what you’ve got more efficiently? You can do that easily with MacKeeper’s Memory Cleaner feature. In most cases, all you’ll need is a screwdriver and a bit of patience.

So for this guide, we’ll be sticking to Macs that can have RAM upgrades without soldering. Although some brave people have managed to change soldered RAM, it’s not recommended, and it’s certainly beyond the scope of this article. With the latest M1 Macs, all MacBook Airs and some newer Intel MacBooks, it’s practically impossible, because the memory is soldered to the motherboard. It’s become more and more difficult to do Mac RAM upgrades. Things have changed a lot over the years. That gave you access to the memory slots. You just popped open a covering or, with some older Apple laptops, lifted up the keyboard.

With older Macs, changing out the RAM was simple. It’s just one of a few components that affect the speed of your Mac, but it’s worth upgrading it if you can.īut that’s a pretty big ‘if’. Installing extra RAM (random access memory) in your Mac can be a quick, easy way to give it a speed boost.

Mac mini 2012 memory upgrade